Newertech L2 G3 upgrades and OS 9.2.1 don't work: I have received a few letters from Newertech G3 upgrade owners who said once they installed OS 9.2.1, their G3 would not work anymore. They all got an error stating that "the Maxpower Extension does not work on a real G3"?

I asked each person to try removing the control panel MachID but that did not help. Not sure what to do at this point? You might try using MachID and set it to the original ID for the 6400 and see if that works. Otherwise it seems that Newertech L2 G3 owners cannot use OS 9.2.1 :(

Update on PRAM issue after OS 9.2.1 upgrade: The person who wrote me anonymously in the past about OS 9.2.1 working on his 6400 just wrote me again with some test info he tried on his 6400 with the different patches out. Thanks. He notes that he only had to zap the PRAM when doing the upgrade in a certain order. Read his email below for more on this. There does not seem to be any side affects to zapping the PRAM so if you must zap it then don't feel insecure about doing it :)

[Dear Tom,

I am the anonymous author of the E-mail about 9.2.1 on a 6400 that you published on the 9/14/2001 edition of your home page. Thank you for protecting my privacy!

I'm now using Kenny's "System 9.2.1 US OW patch v6" and my Sonnet G3 L2 400/1M upgraded 6400 is a charm with the new patch. I can use my UMAX Astra 1200S scanner and even the Yamaha CR-RW burns disks very well using Toast 3.5.7.

As for the guys who have had to zap the PRAM after a 9.2.1 install, I have tried all the patches available and I have had the same problem just once. This occurred after performing the following operations:

1- Boot from a partition with MacOS 9.1;
2- Patch a fresh copy of 9.2.1 system suitcase with one of the existing patches;
3- Swap the current 9.2.1 system suitcase that resides in another partition with the one that was prepared in step 2;
4- Use startup disk control panel to immediately boot into the 9.2.1 partition.

The computer hanged after this procedure with a black screen and the green light on the monitor didn't show up, just as stated in the E-mail message that Don sent to you.

I'm not sure, but I think that the PRAM problem can be avoided booting once more to another bootable partition before trying to boot to the one containing the patched system suitcase.

Greetings.]

If you wish to install OS 9.2.1 on your 6400 then please visit my OS 9.2.1 info page for instructions and links to the hacks to make this possible.

Sonnet ATA/100 card and their new software do reduce audio stutter!: Now I don't have info on their software working on a 6400 or a 6500 yet but Accelerate Your Mac had some info posted from a 7500 owner who said it got rid of his audio issues completely! This is good news and maybe it will help us as well? But you will sacrifice some performance for this as the software slows the drive access down some to accomplish this :( Here is the info from Accelerate's site.

[7500 Owner Reports Sonnet ATA/100 IDE Card Stuttering Audio Fix Works: -
In the past there have often been reports of stuttering audio when playing back files from IDE drives in older Macs using PCI IDE card. (Not all owners reported this, but many have). Sonnet noted in their press release for their ATA/100 card that it would ship with a software utility to address this. A reader post in the forums noted it works:

" Okay, I bit the bullet... took one for the team... and I'm happy to say that my new Sonnet ATA/100 card works flawlessly in my 7500.
Upon initial installation, I still had audio glitches (but blazing fast booting off the new buss) so I installed the accompanying software. This is a control panel with 4 settings that basically slows the card down to prevent the audio glitches we all know and hate. Works like a charm. I've also been running for a week without having to drag out Disk Warrior for major repairs."]

External FW drive helps audio stuttering issues for one 6400 owner!: Joel wrote to say that he was able to reduce his audio stuttering on his 6400 by placing the iTunes app on a Firewire connected HD but he left the MP3 files on the internal HD. Thanks Joel. If you read his email, you will see that he has every piece of hardware known that causes audio stuttering, yet he was able to reduce it by just having the iTunes app on an external drive! It may be that any other drive other then the boot up drive may help as Ralph had written in the past saying when he booted to a SCSI drive, his audio issues went away, and I bet his iTunes app was on the stock IDE drive. This may be the fix we have been looking for?

[Hello Thomas,
Got to the bottom of your page the other day and saw this item about skipping audio in iTunes on a 6400. I'm running OS9.1 on a 6400/180 with 136MB RAM, 15 GB internal, the 1.6 original equipment IDE drive in an external IDE to Firewire box, OrangeMicro combo card, ATI XClaim 32MB video card, Apple TV/FM tuner and card. When I first downloaded iTunes and tried to play an mp3 that I had imported from a CD it was skipping all over the place. I figured my HD wasn't fast enough. Then I downloaded SoundJam and it worked great. But I got to thinking about this iTunes thing. Why shouldn't it work since it is modeled after SoundJam. So I transferred the iTunes folder to the Firewire drive to try it out. Had a hard time making it see my library on the same disk. (Will be trying this again.) But by running iTunes on the FWHD with the mp3 files in the Documents folder on the internal HD got rid of the skipping. The only time that I get skipping is in loading a new application or duplicating/copying multiple files.

I'm going to keep playing with this a bit. I'm going to try to move the mp3s to the FWHD to see if I can get it to work. (It should, I just think that I had my library configured weird.) I'll let you know my progress when I can.
Hope this helps.

Joel
PS Thanks for the info on the combo card and floppy drive. I was prepared to go out and buy a different brand combo card, so you saved me some bucks! Thanks! ]

I would like to hear from anyone that can verify this trick. Try running iTunes from any drive that is not the boot drive and see what happens. Thanks. I must admit that this might be the case as I have been having an issue with iMovie on my B&W G3 where when exporting to video from a FW HD, my internal HD starts to do some kind of access as I hear it start a rhythmic clicking and that causes the video on my monitor to skip but thankfully the video on the tape is unharmed! I then tried moving the iMovie app to my FW drive and I did not have that clicking anymore and the screen never skipped anymore? Very strange. iTunes may have the same problem?

I suggest turning off Virtual Memory to fix the skip when the HD is accessed while saving or loading apps. That has worked for me on my B&W G3 and iBook.

Another fix for audio stuttering: This fix comes from Tupring. He says that playing a certain QT movie fixes it for him until he reboots? Interesting. Thanks Tupring.

[I just visited your page again and I feel I need to share some stuff. I can also confirm the sound issue is indeed quicktime related. Load this streaming quicktime movie and when it starts playing close your browser. Sound issue is completely gone for me after loading the movie. http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/titan_ae/

Not just any quicktime movie trailer, just that one, don't ask me why. Certain others may also work but for some reason that stream fixes it until a reboot every time]

Vimage L2 G3 and OS 9.2.1 work together fine: Tupring also notes that his 6400 with a Vimage G3 upgrade is working fine with the hacked OS 9.2.1. Great!

Making changes to OSX user and group settings and permissions: Here is a letter I posted on Apples forums to help others with setting up their users and groups lists in OSX. Its no where near as easy as in Classic Mac OS but this does work for those that need it and the Terminal apps is not needed for this :)

[I have some help for you. Check out this link

http://www.macobserver.com/tips/hotcocoa/2001/20010427.shtml

It has some good info on getting started with groups in OSX. The main issue is that to my knowledge, all HD's except for the drive that has OSX installed on it (and this includes partitions on drives) have the owner name as the "person logged in" and the group is "unknown"

I think it defaults this way so that any user can log in and have access to non startup drives. I think Apple must have had issues where people where not being able to access other partitions or drives, specially removable drives, so they made all non startup drives show as unknown. Even if you change the access privileges, they do not stick as the next person to log in becomes the owner so the point is mute.

But the link above shows you how to change this. It is working as I have tried it. They suggest using xFiles to change the groups and owners assigned but I found it didn't work. It said I had no privileges to do this? OK so then I tried the Get Info app also mentioned and it works sort of but it does get the job done!

The access privileges did not change for me with Get Info but I could change Owners and Groups with it. Once you change the Group to anything other then "unknown", you can then use Apples Show Info to change the permissions. Just be warned that they don't always stick and it takes a few tries sometimes? What I found that works is to change the Owner and Group and then update the folder or disk. Then switch to Apples Show Info and make the permissions you want. Then 9 times out of 10 they change and stick. You will not see the change until you click on a different folder and then back on the folder you tried to change. If it doesn't work then try again.

Get Info warns you that you do not have access to make these changes but then allows you to enter the admin password to get access. I assume it is switching to root access for this change to work and then logs back out of root when you close the window? It asks for each folder I have tried which is why I think it works this way. xFiles does not ask for your password and just says you cannot use it. If you where to get root access I think it should work as well?

Now that you know how to change the permissions, just be careful how you set them up. You can really make your users lives miserable if you set things up wrong :-(

I should add that you still need Apples NetInfo Manager to create new groups and those instructions are on the link I provided above.

I forgot to add that one of my partitions refused to change the permission or groups and I found that I had to initialize that partition using OSX's Disk Utility. It seems that all non startup partition and drives have a little check box in the Show Info window that says "Ignore Privileges on this Volume". The startup drive does not have this check box and same with the partition giving me trouble!

Once I initialized that partition, the little check box appeared and I was then able to make the group and permissions change with no more issues. I don't know what was different about that partition but its changed now and works as advertised.

Tom]

Another note is that any file you move or create in OS 9 will not have any permissions when you switch back to OSX so just be warned. This goes for any drives you initialize in OS 9 as well. You will need to re-setup any permissions on these once booted back into OSX or they will also show the owner as the person logged in and the group as unknown :(

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